Ultimately, it was the inability of the Klan to overcome “powerful opposition by the Mormons” that doomed the Invisible Empire in Utah.* Efforts by Klan leaders to consult with President Heber J. Grant, the spiritual leader of three-fourths of the inhabitants of the state, met with rebuff as LDS church officials systematically condemned the Klan. Through editorials in the church-owned Deseret News, pronouncements at general conferences, and counsel from some stake presidents and ward bishops, Latter-day Saints were repeatedly admonished to shun the secret society.** Although some members of the LDS church, including at least two bishops, joined the Klan, Mormons en masse heeded the injunction against the Invisible Empire. Opposition from the Mormon church was easily the single most important factor inhibiting the growth of Klankraft in the Beehive State.***

Even without the opposition from church, state, and press, the Ku Klux Klan faced bleak prospects in Utah. It is not simply that there were few ethnic, racial, and religious “enemies” of the Klan in Utah, for a similar demographic profile existed in the other Intermountain states. Rather, it was the peculiar social configuration that reflected Utah’s distinctive identity as the Mormon Zion.

* Night-Hawk, July 23, 1924 [The Imperial Night-Hawk was a periodical of the national Klan organization].

** I was denied permission to examine two files labeled "Secret Societies 1921–1927" contained in the Correspondence of the First Presidency located in the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. It is my understanding that the filed contain letters of inquiry from church members about the Klan along with the replies from the First Presidency admonishing them to avoid the secret society.

*** See Poll, "Utah and the Mormons: A Symbiotic Relationship."